Again,

Spring is the time when fly

The happy birds that change their sky

To build and brood; they live their lives
From land to land.

Still better is the simile in the Passing of Arthur :-
Like wild birds that change

Their season in the night and wail their way

From cloud to cloud.

And again that impressive opening to Demeter and
Persephone :-

Faint as a climate-changing bird that flies
All night across the darkness, and at dawn

Falls on the threshold of her native land

And can no more.

Enoch Arden is lured to the ruddy light of his wife's home,

As the beacon-blaze allures
The bird of passage, till he madly strikes
Against it, and beats out his weary life.

During the commotion in her college, the Princess stood

Fixt like a beacon-tower above the waves
Of tempest, when the crimson-rolling eye
Glares ruin and the wild birds on the light
Dash themselves dead.

How true all such pictures are is known best to a student of bird-life like Mr. Eagle Clarke,

who has spent weeks in the Eddystone Lighthouse, or in light-ships, collecting facts about bird migration. Tennyson, having resided much in the Isle of Wight, would seem to be in touch with these researches. Witness his comparison of the cheerful, sanguine mind which no gloom can sadden, to

the tall ship, that many a dreary year

Knit to some dismal sandbank far at sea,

All thro' the livelong hours of utter dark,

Showers slanting light upon the dolorous wave.

This would suit in every particular (except perhaps "tall") the Kentish Knock-one of the bestknown light-ships on the English coast, and an important observatory for students of migration.

The cruelty of Nature which is so marked a feature during migration, slaying birds by the thousand, is also referred to by Tennyson in other connections. There is nothing of this in Wordsworth; the later poet learned it from his scientific studies in evolution.

For Nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal, The May-fly is torn by the swallow, the sparrow spear'd by the shrike,

And the whole little wood where I sit is a world of plunder

and prey.

And the same thought is more briefly and violently expressed in In Memoriam, in the familiar

phrase, "Nature, red in tooth and claw with ravine". He puts it in another way :—

The ptarmigan that whitens ere his hour,

Woos his own end.

The poet has got firm hold of the principle of protective coloration, and everything is grist that comes to his mill; he can turn all his knowledge to striking account.

There are still other aspects of science that Tennyson affects. In the next chapter we propose to deal with the higher animals, with Astronomy and Geology, all of which are fruitful in matter suitable for our inquiry.

CHAPTER IV

TENNYSON AS GEOLOGIST

TENNYSON was neither a traveller nor a sportsman, and, in consequence, he makes little mention of

any of the mammalia that are not familiar to the habitual resident in England. He must have been a great reader, but he wisely refrained from allusions to animal life with which he himself had not come into direct contact. And although not a sportsman with gun or rod, yet living in constant intercourse with sporting Englishmen, he could not fail to be imbued with something of the sportsman's instincts and interests, and this is notably evident in his references to horses and dogs, especially the latter. Walter Scott was a born sportsman, and his poetry and his Waverley novels attest at every point this side of his nature-his love of dogs and horses, deer chases and otter hunts. Shakespeare, too, having been brought up in the country, knew the points of a good horse, was thoroughly familiar with the tricks of a hare,

and perhaps also was a deer poacher. But Tennyson, although he loves dogs of the more domestic type, gives no evidence that he ever followed a fox or a stag, or even spent a day in rabbit shooting. Indeed, that reference to the rabbit in Aylmer's Field, The rabbit fondles his own harmless face,

is not the description that would come to the pen of a rabbit-shooter. But he is at home in the woodlands and is keenly alive to the ways of the creatures that house there. Psyche, in The Princess, Veiled her brows, and prone she sank, and so

Like tender things that, being caught, feign death,
Spoke not nor stirr❜d.

This makes no specific mention of any animal, but the description will apply to the hedgehog and many others.

The hedgehog underneath the plantain bores,

shows personal observation at work, and, as usual, it is correct, the hedgehog loving a leafy covert in which to screen himself during the day.

Laid up like winter bats,

shows that he is familiar with the hibernating habit of these interesting creatures. He has made the

acquaintance of the badger :

Live like an old badger in his earth,
With earth about him everywhere.